From the kitchen to the racetrack and back again

Dinner for one

It’s most unusual for me to cook for just myself but small person is away and the Other Half is out for the evening. At this point I either normally have takeaway or kids tea (chips, beans and some form of frozen, breadcrumbed meat) but as we had some defrosted chicken, plus a couple of lemons that needed using up, I decided to do some sticky chicken.

The recipe (adapted from one on BBC Good Food) is pretty much one pot for cooking although I did have to use a bowl for the marinade, which consisted of:

This was mixed together and chicken breasts (slashed on one side) were dunked, rolled and generally smothered in it. I stuck this in the fridge for 2 hours but you could do anything from 20 minutes to overnight.

When you are ready to cook, preheat oven to Gas Mark 7 and halve some new potatoes (I used about 200g for just me which was a little too much) into a roasting tray. Remove the chicken from the marinade and add it to the tray. At this point I melted about 25g of butter and added this to the marinade before pouring it over the chicken and potatoes and mixing well. Cook for half an hour in the oven (I added peas for the last 5 minutes) and make sure you serve with the pan juices.

Talking of pan juices, I really didn’t think there was enough and the honey was a little strong for me so next time I’ll halve the honey and double the butter. I also paired this with a French Sparkling Chardonnay which worked with the lemon tastes but was completely overwhelmed by the honey. Someone far more knowledgeable than me, on the Naked Wines website, suggested a Vermentio which could have worked well. They also did not like the effect of the marinade on the potatoes (although I don’t think they used butter which altered it slightly) but the recipe would go just as well with some parmentier potatoes or rice. Another wine suggestion was Rioja Blanco which I also think could work well.

All in, not a terrible disaster, plus we still have some lovely chicken for lunches this week and the washing up was minimal. Besides all that, I got to drink a whole bottle of bubbles and watch frothy girlie films to myself for an evening!